CANNABIS RISING

Maybe somewhere high above L.A., on a big, wispy puff of a
magic-dragon cloud, Daryl Gates found himself with Jack Herer looking
down on his old, literal stomping grounds.

What the heavenly odd couple, who died a day apart in mid-April, might
have thought as they mulled over a gathering tribe downtown in the
City of Angels is anyone's cosmic guess -- even if the former LAPD
chief made no apologies for shining his shoes on hippie ass, and the
earthy ganja activist's life was dedicated to legalizing the sweet
leaf of cannabis.

But Gates and Herer surely would have shaken their heads as they
watched the second annual THC Expose unfold at the L.A. Convention
Center on April 23-25.

For Gates, the thousands of marijuana lovers who poured into the venue
to inhale all things intoxicatedly green must have been a nightmarish
trip from the Reefer Madness era, when he first joined the force, in
1949.

For Herer, whose name and visage could be glimpsed everywhere on the
convention floor, it would have to have been the finest shotgun hit
from Earth to divinity: Cheech & Chong Telegraph Jack.

Let's be clear, for all the jargon about "medicine" and "patients,"
the pot convention that rolled into L.A. was dedicated more to getting
stoned than getting better.

Memo to Philip Morris: The Stoner Nation has arrived.

Naturally, L.A. helped it shine, with aisles upon aisles of vendors
hawking all things marijuana. Traditional paraphernalia from Bob
Marley's era vied for dollars with vaporizers, pot tees, pot
adornments and, of course, nubile pot models.

Clazina Rose, a 22-year-old doe-eyed honey from Orange County, who
wore a plastic pot-leaf lei and worked a table for a Long Beach
dispensary, gushed like a pageant hopeful that she wanted peace, love
and a healthy buzz for the people of Earth. "I hope to be Miss High
Times 2011," she said. "I just want to educate everyone. I'm brushing
up on my Dutch in case I get to go to Amsterdam."

Martin "Bucky" Fisher, a veteran of the pot wars and national sales
manager of Medical Marijuana Inc., effused about keeping sales of the
sacrament out of the hands of corporate poachers.

"We want a million people in our network, who are ready to distribute
when it becomes legal," Fisher said. "When we can market the product
itself, we'd like to keep it among the little guys, who have been
doing it for a long time."

For merchants like Denis Buj, some megacorporate competitors may not
seem as far-fetched as they might have even five years ago.

Buj is a Canadian whose company has developed Spinner Hydroponics. He
declared the L.A. cannabis conference a portent far more powerful than
the dispensaries springing up like so many mushrooms. "This THC Expose
has blown the doors off this issue," Buj said. Now we're not beating
around the bush, so to speak."

And that's what concerns L.A. County Sheriff's Department Senior
Narcotics Detective Glenn Walsh. Walsh said the sale of medical
marijuana has likely bumped traditional, nonprescription sales upward.

"We look at the abuse triangle: accessibility, acceptability and
affordability," Walsh said. "You establish that, and use of marijuana
increases."

While hard numbers seemed elusive, both Walsh and the conventioneers
said that prices offered by dispensaries are slightly higher than
street dope, but as much for experience and environment as for the
higher-grade product. But Walsh maintained that this dynamic will
evaporate with legalization. "Just as soon as the THC level is
regulated like the alcohol content in beer is, the street dealers will
offer higher grades," he predicted.

While the acolytes at the convention made a powerful case for final
legalization, Walsh offered a full-throated argument against it.
Citing the linear trajectory of legislation like Prop. 215 in 1996 and
SB420 in 2003 (yes, that's Senate Bill 420), Walsh cited the cynical
mass gaming of laws ostensibly passed to offer terminal AIDS and
cancer patients some limited legal shelter if they wanted to use pot
in their twilight days.

Walsh said some dealers have storefronts throughout L.A. that sell
dope to tens of thousands of "patients," and the wholesale supply
chain remains shrouded in, at least publicly, smoke. It has been a
rapid erosion abetted by cowardice that courses through City Hall, the
Kenneth Hahn Building and on, to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., he
said. "The politicians are afraid to take a stand," Walsh said.

That might come as a darkly rich 90-point headline to many of the
potheads cruising the L.A. Convention Center, who spoke of
dispensaries being shut down almost as fast they open, and that the
city is prepared to whack out the vast majority of existing
dispensaries.

But Walsh insists that a relentless game of semantic gymnastics and a
tainted if not blind eye to widespread abuse has brought Los Angeles --
and the state -- to the precipice.

Oddly, Walsh's ultimate assessment seemed shared by many at the
convention. Though they insisted the laws are helping people battle
myriad ailments with a long-suppressed remedy, they too seemed to see
the convention as a sign that the societal floodgates are creaking.
There was a giddiness that these gates are about to break wide open.

"This is about culture, not consumption," Buj said.

Perhaps; Gates and Herer, if they were on that cloud looking down,
might at least agree on that.